July 26, 2024 • 64 mins
Welcome to another exciting episode of The Trademarke Podcast where we dive into Google's latest changes and how they impact marketers and consumers alike. This episode features special guests Johnny Wenzel, Ryan Redding, and Matt Tyner who share their insights on the evolving landscape of search engines.
We kick off with a light-hearted conversation about secondhand embarrassment before diving into the serious topic of Google's new AI-driven search features. Johnny and Ryan discuss the implications of Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE), and how it’s transforming the way search results are displayed.
The conversation takes a deeper turn as we explore the complexities of digital literacy, consumer behavior, and the psychological aspects of marketing. Ryan Redding, the CEO of Levergy shares his cynical yet realistic views on Google's recent changes, while Johnny offers a balanced perspective on the potential benefits and pitfalls of AI in search.
Matt Tyner from Bone Dry Roofing jumps in to share his observations from the roofing industry, emphasizing the importance of human-centric marketing and the challenges of navigating constant algorithm changes. We also touch on the controversial Google leak and its implications for SEO and digital marketing strategies.
Join us for a thought-provoking discussion that covers everything from the ethical considerations of AI to practical tips for staying ahead in a rapidly changing digital landscape. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of search, marketing, and consumer behavior.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
There we go. What's up? We're live. What's going on, everyone?
Welcome back to another episode.
Exciting episode. Breaking news of the trademark.
We've got Johnny Wenzel joining us today. And Johnny, before we get started,
I got to know, can you please tell us of a time when you got secondhand embarrassment for someone?
(00:21):
When I was embarrassed for someone else? Yeah, like you were out in public and
you saw someone like walk into a door, something super embarrassing.
Oh man. I feel like I have a lot of examples and I'm thinking of my wife who's
a little bit, can be clumsy, but I don't think she'd want to share that example.
Yeah. Okay. So one time I was in Detroit biking and very much saw someone just
(00:50):
peeing on the side of a house, very uncomfortable experience.
And then they They looked at me and I looked at them and we locked eyes.
It was the most uncomfortable one second of my life. And then we very much looked
away like nothing was happening.
So that one, very embarrassing for both of us in that case.
Oh gosh, firsthand and secondhand embarrassment. It's rough. Yeah.
(01:11):
Yeah. All right. Well, we are excited. We're going to be digging into some stuff
about Google today. All the changes around Google, good, bad, ugly.
So let's go ahead and dig in. Step into the trademark.
(02:01):
What up, what up, what up, Sarah? How's it going? It's going pretty good.
How's it going, Johnny? Thank you for joining us last minute.
Yeah, no, I've been preparing for this for months and took notes and I'm ready to go.
Good. I mean, we've been talking about the Google changes for over a year now,
and I'm always astonished when we're in a room and we're talking about SGE and
(02:24):
all of the new new changes.
And people look at us like, this is the first time they've heard it.
I'm like, but I talked about it for a year.
Yeah, absolutely. You actually sent me on this, Sarah, to one of Tommy Mello's
podcasts to talk about GPT and all of that.
(02:45):
And the person I was with said, most people don't know what it is.
They are not familiar with chat GPT.
We were in an uber at the time and asked the uber driver like hey have you heard
of chat gpt person said no we went to red robin actually believe it or not ask
the waitress have you heard of chat gpt,
and they said like oh what what's that so like most people are actually despite
(03:08):
the hype i think you know as marketers in this space we obviously are all over
it and advocates like yourselves I don't think marketers are all over SGE and in AI.
It's like, you know, we should be.
And the ones that are innovative and ready for the next thing and paying attention
(03:32):
are, but not every marketer is on the same level as well.
So, you know, what you don't know, you don't know.
But it scares me what they don't know. Right?
Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. But it's been encouraging to see how the trades
have been embracing this.
A lot of people in the trades, and I feel like advocates of it like yourself
(03:54):
and others in the space are really pushing for the trades to use it to improve
their operations, their marketing, really anything they can.
And I've seen some very creative applications of that.
Just generative AI in general. But now it's, you know, to the point of Google's
making changes, it's changing so rapidly. So how do we, how do we stay on top of it?
(04:16):
Yeah. How do we stay on top of it, Johnny? Like what, what's your take on this?
Yeah. So the very, I mean, it's a simple answer, but following certain newsletters really helps.
I know that Sarah, you often send me links to newsletters. Look at this, this is happening.
So search engine land is a really good one specifically for SEO and PPC,
(04:39):
just understanding the changes and the leaks and whatever, whatever's happening.
I tend to like just pick one or two that you like find.
If you have too many, you'll get overwhelmed and it's usually less more in this case.
So I almost exclusively just look at whatever search engine land is saying.
I also subscribe to an AI newsletter as well that talks about the latest advancements
(05:04):
in usually different GPT applications.
Yeah. And so what have you been seeing? And Eric, what have you been seeing?
Because you get to look at people's sites on the back end.
So I guess first we should explain what Google Generative AI has done or what
they've done with SGE and in search in general. So, Johnny, you're really good
(05:27):
at explaining things because I sent you articles, so you read a lot.
Yeah. Johnny, let's delve into this. Delve. Yeah.
So, I guess going right to the very beginning of SGE stands for,
I think, I don't even know, is it Search Generative Experience? Is that it?
(05:50):
Maybe it's like generating or there's a few. More or less, the Search Generative Experience.
And it all has to do with chat GPT. Should I like give it a basic on what chat GPT even is?
Let's go like all the way, all the way back. Go all the way.
Let's go all the way basic. Yeah, absolutely.
(06:11):
So I was going to, you know, jokingly do a technical explanation of neural nodes
and the technology behind it.
That never goes well. What does go well is chat GPT. What it is,
is you more or less put in a prompt.
It's what it's called, a question, a task. You ask it to do something and it spits it out.
(06:33):
And kind of a good analogy for it is it's similar to autocomplete.
So think if you're typing an email or sending a text message.
Text message is a better example. You're typing it and then it will have usually
three different words that you can pick as the next word that it is predicting
you should be using next.
(06:53):
Or with an email that'll you know in the gray text
it'll say this is you know how you could finish this sentence and
so that's autocomplete it is looking at
your past behavior and using
that to try and predict what comes next chat gpt is that on like steroids supercomputer
(07:15):
instead of just looking at you know your history it's the history of every word
digitally documented like in the history of human existence.
So tons of data that has really kind of fed this digital brain that allows it
to predict really well what's supposed to come next.
And so it's not just how to finish this email, but a lot more advanced,
(07:40):
like what comes next when planning a complete marketing strategy.
And even more advanced now is video and image generation.
It's just taking a prompt and kind of predicting almost pixel by pixel what
should come next based off of how every picture in human history that's online
has done something similar.
(08:01):
So it's incredibly impressive how it works.
But as far as you need to understand it, you put in a request and with a pretty
high degree of accuracy,
it gives you an answer that's more or less acts like a brain that has analyzed
all the data of human history and is predicting the right thing to say back to you.
(08:26):
And what are they doing with it in search?
Yeah. So what they're doing with it in search specifically, search meaning like the Google page.
So you go onto Google and you search.
Historically, it's always, Google's been more like a catalog of websites.
So they have a list of all of the websites that relate to the keyword that was used in the search.
(08:49):
What Google has done, and they've done it in response to ChatGPT,
which is open AI, which is owned by Microsoft.
So Microsoft's kind of really been pushing this a reversal of how things have
gone the last decade or two, at least from the online search perspective is
they're pioneering this.
Whereas Google is now kind of playing catch up all along
(09:11):
the way and it's exactly
that it's it's providing the the
chat gpt response above the search results so really when you are now google
searching it is generating the predicted response rather than just showing you
all the websites that could answer this response maybe we should show an example.
(09:36):
Yeah. That's what I was pulling up.
All right. I just searched, uh, yeah, I just, I just searched,
uh, air conditioner, not cooling.
And so, yeah, I pulled what, you know, what I, what I assume is probably like
an, an aggregated list of stuff based on the average of, you know,
(09:59):
the same content, similar content they found across the web.
But it also, I think something that a lot of people are wondering,
Johnny, is how this all works.
So you get the AI overview, and I search air conditioner not cooling.
And it's like, the air conditioner is on, but not cooling. It could be a number
(10:19):
of reasons, including seven common reasons.
And then right underneath of it is an article to this site.
So I just wondered, obviously, this is the source, but why not mention that?
Yeah. So that is the difference between Google and how open AI or chat GPT historically
(10:39):
has gone is, especially the early versions of chat GPT,
it was always sort of based off of historical information. It wasn't searching in real time.
And so it was, if you ask it anything from like the last year,
current events, it wouldn't know it.
Google being, you know, the search engine of all search engines is launching
(11:01):
with more of a search focused, that is layered onto and integrated with their product.
So specifically, rather than just only looking at the history of everything
that's ever been written,
they're doing that, but also giving some preference to the things that were
ranking highly for them, that they thought had a high ability to answer that question.
(11:23):
And then they're referencing that and almost citing it there at the bottom.
So the Google experience is a lot more about live search layered in with it,
as opposed to how ChatGTT has gone.
Now the new model, the 4.0 model, seems like it actually has search capabilities
and it is doing a lot more live search with these things.
(11:46):
But that's what's going on, is it's looking at every word ever written and then
And also looking at the Google search results for that and coming up with the
best answer and citing its sources there at the bottom in that carousel.
But then if you scroll down, look at the mess that they created.
So if you're a consumer, you're like a normal human being and you're looking
at Google and you're like, oh, air conditioner not cooling.
(12:09):
And that could be a search, right? More than likely it would be like my AC is
not blowing cool air or AC not cold.
They give you all of these diagnosis as a consumer.
How confused would you? You'd have to like they want you to DIY almost.
(12:30):
But there's 15 more. Look, go back, Eric.
Up or down. I see. Yeah. Like, oh, my God.
Dirty air compressor. It's like screaming at you.
Like Google's intent in the beginning was to provide a relevant search within
a very fast time frame with authority that's great content that can really make
(12:57):
a conversion happen faster at the speed of search.
But they've slowed down. I wonder what the speed time is first.
But they've slowed down the conversion with content.
And so they're confusing the consumer.
Because if i was a consumer i'd be like well so
everything could be wrong but where
do i even you know obviously yeah pop your air filter but i mean seriously you've
(13:23):
just like made something relevant irrelevant because it's not relevant to like
i don't know and people believe Google so much.
They believe it as the source of truth, which is insane to me.
But that's because I'm a marketer. And I know that I input things into search.
(13:44):
But Google is just not the source of truth. Like.
And car easy. So that's irrelevant. And what will it could be based on the keyword?
Yeah. Yeah. They've created a huge mess.
And, you know, like we were talking about before the show, Sarah,
(14:04):
like all of these dropdowns, they're giving you four articles.
Articles and all of these articles i'm looking
at it i know for a fact that lead company is not here in virginia beach
cool ray is not in virginia beach florida space.gov
that's not in virginia beach carrier that's
carrier could be one of the relevant ones i'd say hoffman
(14:25):
brothers they're not here so i mean yeah
like these websites are going to provide us with the answers that helped
aggregate this this response or this you know this output on google search but
like like you were saying if I'm searching and that was always like the like
the beautiful thing about Google was like I would search where I'm at right
(14:46):
now like mosquitoes are you know in my backyard or.
Tree fell over instead of it being like here's six reasons why your tree might
have fallen over it would have been like here's six free care companies and
so like you're not you're not getting that much you know of course you search
near me or nearby you'll probably get it but Yeah,
but Google has proximity in there, right? Well, it should have proximity.
(15:09):
And in the search labs, when, you know, it was first, when they were testing
it, it did have, it was working on building the proximity into that search.
But I'm going to send Raya Redding a link too.
But now it just seems convoluted with ranking content that may have authority,
(15:29):
but it doesn't have, like, yes, I want my blog to be known everywhere.
But I don't, like, the clicks and the impressions matter, but the conversions
matter more for a small business, right?
If I'm showing up in Timbuk2 because someone's saying AC not cooling,
(15:52):
but I'm in California, how does this help my small business?
Let's check this out. All right, so Miller's, that's actually a client of mine.
They're in Chesapeake, Virginia. They do serve as my city, but their blog should
appear, which I'm not saying that's indicative of my location.
I think that's just because I know for a fact that we optimized this article for this query.
(16:17):
I'm not going to click on it, but let me just do this. One hour.
There's a page. I was wondering if Valvoline, love it.
There's pages coming up, but I was wondering if they had that AI overview,
if that would help their chances in local search or organic,
but they were fourth for AC repair near me, which is not amazing.
(16:41):
Yeah, so for questions, they're ranking, but for normal searches, their output is below.
Yeah. Johnny, what would you say about this?
So I appeared distracted. I was looking up some recent quotes from Google CEO about this. Yeah.
(17:04):
And here's a few things from a recent interview. you.
He says, part of what I hope search serves to do is give a lot more context
around that answer and allow people to explore it deeply.
And then jumping around here, got a bit of black in this comment,
but he says, I remain optimistic.
(17:25):
Empirically, what we are seeing throughout the years, I think human curiosity
is boundless. It's something we deeply understood in search.
More than any other company, we will differentiate ourselves in our approach
through this transition, and then this one.
People are responding very positively to AI overviews.
(17:46):
It's one of the most positive changes I've seen in search based on metrics.
But people do jump off on it. And when you give context around it,
they actually jump off it.
It actually helps them understand so they engage with the content underneath too.
In fact, if you put content and links within AI overviews, they get higher click-through
(18:07):
rates than if you put it outside of AI overviews.
So that is the claim from Sundar, CEO of Google, that it is making more clickable.
It's this idea that it's encouraging or feeding natural human curiosity to answer
or to fully understand the question.
(18:30):
The thing is, I think that is true in a lot of contexts.
It probably helps for something I could realistically do by myself.
I could not fix my own air conditioner. I'm a marketer. I'm not a tech.
I had laser eye surgery last week. I'm not going to want to know how to do that.
I honestly don't even want to know the nuances of how it works.
(18:52):
Just get it done and help me see, right?
Which I think there is some benefits here, but Google continues to be built for a general use case.
And over and over i
think we see the trades often gets left behind as having very particular niche
interests and use cases that google hasn't built specifically for what do you
(19:18):
think ryan welcome to the show hey thanks thanks for looping in this is awesome
what's up johnny what's up eric,
okay so i i'm probably more cynical i i saw this interview i i kind of think
they're full of crap right now i'm not gonna lie i feel like they they're trying
(19:39):
so damn hard to push out tech in front of people even though it's not fully baked yet.
They know that that's where they have to go. They know that's where the trend
is. There's a lot of pressure for them to move.
I don't think they're really as thoughtful as they're coming across.
And I think the CEO of Alphabet has to publicly say, oh this is what we're looking
(20:03):
for and all the he's a salesperson right he's trying to make,
stockholders happy i i haven't seen that sort of impact and i think i think
the scuttlebutt inside google from the people who i know who are on the various
teams who especially who are leveraging and implementing the ai components into
(20:23):
search and ads and various things is that they're all just,
scrambling to meet really weird targets like
there's no thoughtful master plan
there's they're not and i think there's just a lot of a lot of external pressure
to compete with open ai like open ai has obviously the partnership with bing
(20:44):
they've got now this ink partnership with apple like there's a big pressure
with google to get this crap together fast fast.
So yeah, I'm with you, Johnny. I think that Google's trying to look at it in
a general use case of like, hey, how do you make a cheeseburger or whatever? That's fine.
(21:04):
But if we're going to take any sort of inference we have from the knowledge
panel where people would do a zero-click result, there's a lot of critique about Google.
And those were announced because they were siphoning web traffic away from where
that information came from.
They're They're just feeding it to the user. It was helpful for the user on
those sort of things, but it starved people of the traffic that they were depending on.
(21:26):
I was just reading just two days ago, trying to think two days ago where a site
who predominantly provided like sports data, like high end high analytical sports
data and got a lot of traffic.
Since this AI overview came out, all their traffic has been slashed by 90 something percent.
Which if you are doing anything about publishing content,
(21:48):
content it is like strangling you so i'm
i'm very cynical right now and we
gotta be careful that my google doesn't hear me and but like
it's just i get why they're trying to do it and i actually like like the idea
of what it could be like that just feels like so far away right now like with
(22:11):
the dream and the reality just feels like very very not in alignment but that's just me,
I think like Johnny and I can speak from the product manager side, Puneet.
Of, of managing and creating technology products, right? Google is a product,
and it has multiple products inside of it.
And Johnny was just at Google last week.
(22:31):
And I read somewhere on a post, they were like, well, all of you holding events
at Google, you know, is that really where you want to be aligned with?
Yeah, it's Google, right? We want to be aligned with Google,
but we want to be there asking the right questions.
And we want to be there, like having the right conversation and being a part
of, hey, we're a small business, we're seeing this impact, like,
(22:55):
tell me more, because you're controlling our business, right? We have a voice too.
And I think that is where we go and we talk to Google and we ask questions.
But I think the point of the matter is, is that from a product manager standpoint,
we are given deadlines, we create the product, right?
(23:17):
We're given deadlines, we roadmap everything thing out we
but we have priority shift and when that
priority shift happens that means like other things
get deprioritized and that could just be in one component of part of the product
when there could be multiple others like departments and organizations that
aren't working with that one component when they should be and i think that's
(23:42):
what's happening in google as well because they've I've always worked like that,
even when I went to their office, you know?
Yeah, they've kind of done really good, like even as a model of like the sandbox
development sort of approach where multiple teams don't really have a set agenda.
It's almost like a skunk work sort of idea of like, hey, you guys just dream,
(24:04):
solve something, create something cool, and they'll figure out later how it all fits.
And I agree that Google is a product. My concern comes in with how much weight
that particular product has on the economy worldwide.
I think the latest stat I've read is somewhere between 25 and 33 cents of every
dollar is influenced by Google.
(24:27):
Either by the search or the transaction processing or the cloud processing.
They aren't just, oh, it's something you can opt in or opt out of,
you can choose to use or not.
They are pivotal, not just in the American economy, but the worldwide economy at scale.
And so them making snafus has really big practical impacts aside from the shareholders,
(24:53):
aside from PM delivery schedules, individuals aside from
that the impact to the economy
as a whole even if people don't know that
they're participating in it is profound and so
i think that's like one of my big gripes is that and
i'm not i'm not making the argument for like big brother to like regulate all
business exchange that's not exactly my critique but it is a it's a really big
(25:17):
risk when a company with that sort of scale and leverage makes rushed decisions
because the impact it makes trickles down with second and third hand outcomes,
that the stockholders don't care about, that the employee culture doesn't care
about, that the executive team doesn't care about. That's not their interest.
Right? So, yeah, it's a complicated puzzle.
(25:42):
Do you think that Google is the source of truth for consumers?
All of you answer it like that's deep,
have you ever lied to your search i was on a webinar and and i read that this
guy was like no one lies to their search yeah why is why does my tooth hurt when i drink water.
(26:08):
I don't lose weight fast a
friend of mine is overweight yeah a
friend of mine a guy i know eric eric has has
long hair like the overweight is the mullet really
a thing eric i'm curious to know i'm curious to know and honestly i'm just jealous
of johnny's hair i always am what eric i'm curious your take do you think google
(26:32):
is is the source of truth for people i think google is an avenue to help people
find the source of truth.
It's a platform. And I think that the beauty of free speech is that anyone can
go on there if they have a website, I guess, and say whatever they want.
(26:52):
And so I believe it's an avenue to help people arrive at an answer.
I wouldn't say that Google's the source of truth, but I would say it's definitely
an avenue that helps people arrive to the source of truth.
And I think, and this is what I was talking about in New Orleans,
is that web publishers and webmasters and business owners need to be putting
the truth on their website because the consumer is going to find out the truth
(27:14):
eventually it's either going to be from you or it's going to be from someone else.
And so if everyone just puts the truth out there, they're better off to be the
one to get that click and get that customer.
So if I can answer. Yes, please.
I think more than ever, social validation is guiding people's perception of truth.
(27:37):
I think reviews more than anything.
Because I think people are a lot more skeptical now than they ever have been.
Case in point, Brian. Existing.
We all are but
it's you know like the question that you know
(27:57):
a lot of listeners of this podcast like how do people pick
me you know what is the as you know they're
for home services roofing whatever it might be like
how are they going to choose my business and
so what is the truth there is that truth would be this is
the best home service business you can pick to solve
your problem and so like how they figure that out and
(28:19):
a lot of it you can go to a website and website say we're
the best and we do all this and there's some stuff with
you know like warranties you've been around you're trying to establish that credibility
but you know people they go to maps they
go to reviews and they try and
make an educated guess as to what's going to be the
right decision you know the the true plumber
(28:40):
near me that's gonna fix my pipes the best or whatever it might be yeah your
reputation starts in the search most definitely in the home service but i'm
saying like in general right like someone's googling like i have a frog in my
backyard and i I can't find it.
(29:00):
Right. And then like, gosh, I don't even know.
Is your frog. Okay. Sarah. My frog is great. His name is Sam. He's totally fine.
And Google helped me find it. No, but like random ask questions is what I'm thinking of. And, and,
Like, I feel like a lot of people will keep at the top of the search and not
(29:25):
dig deeper and say, well, does this article make sense to this article?
Does this depend on what search they're doing? Right.
If they're doing like medical discovery, then maybe they go in a couple links deeper.
But if they're asking like a random question, like how many links do you think
that they click to get to that source of truth for themselves?
(29:48):
So, I love questions like this because there's so many layers that have to get unpacked, right?
I would probably make the argument that as a society, and I think the past five,
10 years have demonstrated this in all sorts of avenues, our digital literacy is very, very low.
(30:11):
Like even though we have access to digital technology
and digital information our ability to
understand filter navigate interpret analyze those
things thoughtfully has never been worse so an
example like would be a library technically has
all the information nobody's lining up at the
library right to filter through research journals like
(30:34):
that's just not what they do and that's not a skill that we train really anymore
and because of to
your point johnny like social norming social pressure people are wanting to
find people like them who agree with them like you have all these like biases
and heuristics of like social norming fundamental attribution error confirmation
bias that people look for things that already agree with what they want and so you,
(30:59):
I don't think people will look deeply into things cynically,
even though the information is there.
In fact, it might be said that the way that social manipulation works is to
gravitate people who are high engagement with each other.
That's why, to some degree, social media is one of the most isolating places
on the planet because you find people like you and they disagree with you and
(31:22):
create these echo chambers.
It's not actually a true cross-section of social discourse. course.
It's not the public square that it used to be in the 1700s and 1800s.
So I think people do take, for better or for worse, what they get when they
do a Google search, that first impression.
I think they do take it as though it's true in face value, which is hilarious
(31:47):
because there's people like me and Eric, who's part of our income is actually
to help our clients find that real estate where it's easy to find, right?
To influence that outcome. And yet, it doesn't mean that it's true.
It doesn't mean that it's real. It doesn't mean that it is credible.
It doesn't mean any of those things are there. It's just, that's what people are fed.
So they assume it, which again, goes back to probably what I would say earlier
(32:08):
is like, there's a lot of weight and responsibility with companies like Google
to make sure that that information is as quality and as helpful and as vetted as it possibly can be.
It's a really complicated problem but i i think our
our digital literacy is so low that our brains do not want to engage to go is
this correct is this valid where's this data source from is this the right data
(32:30):
and we don't have the skills to actually do that process to actually thoughtfully
analyze it instead we just fall back into like what agrees with us or what makes
us feel a certain way it's like these weird.
Psychological responses not thoughtful analytical responses so i'm in a really negative mood right
now guys i'm sorry this is it happens
(32:53):
i mean it's like
a wild west out there right and search changes
by the second of search and it always has right like the keywords change everything
changes but this is a a new person like a new rollout and so now it's like it
can affect consumers and it's funny i was on the i was on the beta and so i
(33:16):
opted into everything But then as this rolled out,
I had to re-opt in to actually get the AI overview parts of the search again.
So I'm wondering how many people are experiencing it because I know everyone
has different searches or Google instances.
So, but from a marketing standpoint, I get the cynic. I get,
(33:38):
I get, I get, you know, it's, it's chaos.
And, you know, I was listening to this one, I don't know what he was,
maybe just talking, and he was like, yeah, black hat searches are up.
And I'm like, of course they are.
We don't know what we're doing.
(34:00):
Here's another deep question. See, we want to just keep rolling with it.
Do you all feel that the recent news of the leak was a controlled leak by Google?
Oh, yeah. It's a PR. A, people need to know. It's totally PR. You think so? Oh, yeah.
(34:20):
Okay, now you sound cynical and I sound like... Tell me why you think it's a
controlled PR leak. Now I'm curious about this.
Because I'm a marketer and I would do the same thing. No one's paying attention
to search. People don't know what they're doing. Black hat searches are going increasing.
Cyber insecurity issues are arising by this.
Yeah, I think that there was some control to that leak to distract people.
(34:48):
Will either distract them or PR because Google's just been in the hot seat for
the past couple weeks with all this AI overview stuff.
Personally, I haven't been paying attention to it, but I'm not getting on LinkedIn
arguing or getting on Reddit arguing.
But I do feel that there's become this bit of a witch hunt with SEOs versus Google.
(35:11):
And everyone's taking this leak and trying to
find something to prove that Google's been suppressing them for years or something,
but I could see it being a controlled leak. What do you think, John?
Honestly, I don't have a take. I'm not going to pretend to have a take.
(35:34):
Usually, if there's a clear benefit to something that a large organization is
doing and it yielded that result,
there's a chance of it. I think there's a chance of it being leaked.
But knowing the people I know at Google and the approach they take as a company,
I don't think they would have wanted this.
(35:55):
I also think they upset a lot of employees, to be honest.
Right you never you never know what an upset employee can do but at the same time like.
Google is google and they know what they're doing and their marketing team and
pr team you know when bad pr is happening so if that was true do you think they
(36:17):
would still make a pixel phone every year because it seems like at some point they would stop trying,
i think they just forgot about that department i mean i guess i guess maybe
i'm like anti-conspiracy from from the stuff that was in the leak,
(36:37):
if if i'm google and i'm like releasing something like oh no look at me there's
misdirection i think i don't i don't think i would have leaked those things
because some of those things directly,
contradicted things that google has publicly said for a while right there's
people looking at those things that were like hey google lied to us about x
y or z and google's having the backpedal and they're publicly saying things
(36:59):
like hey don't don't take this out of context and it does you don't know how
much we're waiting it and you don't know when in time this was a factor for us like.
It's not putting them in the best light as far as what was leaked and what they've
said publicly through like the webmaster forums with John Mueller and whatnot.
So it doesn't pass a sniff test to me of misdirection because it changes the conversation.
(37:25):
It, it more seems like it might be dirty laundry that shows that they probably
don't have their stuff together as they want people to assume that they do.
Not that they're incompetent, but just that it's, it's a
big complicated organism yeah i
think that's that's true where i have noticed with
any company you know that they probably
(37:48):
don't even any person they probably don't have their stuff together as much
as they're trying to lead you to believe yeah yeah just for for context on the
leak or those listings and like what leak happened there's i mean i can i can
give my take on it you guys probably have researched it better than me but essentially
google has their proprietary
algorithm on how they decide what content goes at the top, what goes at the
(38:11):
bottom of their search results.
And all of the different signals that they use, more or less just like a list
of all of them, were leaked.
And so the SEO community is kind of freaking out. Here's everything that they consider.
It would be more like if there's something you bought from the store,
there's an ingredient list on it, you wouldn't be able to recreate it necessarily.
(38:34):
Like you can see what's in it but you don't know how much of which and the process in which it is,
made so it's not like no one can take that necessarily and
build google but it does show everything
that's in there which includes some things they said that they don't
take into account so that's where
it's like a bit of that's the witch hunt that eric's
(38:54):
talking about people saying you said you don't look at this but it's here
in in the the documentation from from you
know i think march was the version so yeah really
exciting for i don't know exciting might
not be the right word like monumental like it's
it's a that's very significant event an exposure of things that you know the
(39:17):
black box of google kind of a kick into it but yeah was it on purpose was it
an accident or unintentional doesn't really matter i'm just glad it happened
yeah we report fork that you signed.
It's like, was it the new Coke whole thing again, right? Like,
they just like new recipe. Whoops, just kidding. Like.
(39:42):
Yeah it doesn't pass that snip test to me i'm probably with you johnny i just
don't know you know like i mean like it's speculation and whatever happened
happened it's out there for the world to interpret or put into chat gpt and
ask how to interpret this and what you should do,
which is what i did this morning and then i sent it to johnny after i downloaded
(40:04):
it And I was like, why is half of this like not there?
And then I thought about it. And of course, not everything would be there.
But the majority of the context was there.
Basically, I, I send a bunch of articles to Johnny all the time.
And I'm asking him questions like, what does this mean?
Please help me. Yeah. And then I'll I asked Chachi PT and pretend like I'm really smart.
(40:28):
Yeah so i think despite the doom and gloom of it and i really the doom and gloom
is just that it seems like google search which has been a reliable way to get to the truth maybe,
compromising that reliability that being said it's like it's the beast nature
(40:50):
of the beast It's the world that we're living in.
It will hinder a bit of ability to directly maybe help drive marketing results,
but there's still stuff we can do. We can navigate this world.
So Ryan, what are you doing to navigate this world? Very curious to just from your running an agency,
(41:13):
all your experience, how have you approached? I can see in pivots that you've done.
So this is going to sound really unsexy and really uncomplicated.
Philosophically, I would argue that a lot of the shifts, this is true for OpenAI,
this is true for Google, have been focusing around the core needs of humans
(41:36):
first, not about the specific tactics or technology in the middle.
In fact, I might argue that they're trying to make the technology make the human
interaction more transparent so if anything we've kind of reverted back to being
really focused on the human experience and the human engagement and not just
like oh here's the thing washrooms repeat it'll always work it's not what used to work in 2007 2008 2009,
(42:02):
but a lot of people skip over the human elements of marketing which is really
weird because that's It's a fundamental human experience. It's a human interaction.
And so a lot of us, like when we write content for a website,
it's focusing on the humans, not so much on the robots.
(42:22):
It's focusing the offers that are compelling to an actual target customer,
not just like, hey, this is going to get us higher conversion rates because X, Y, or Z.
We're really trying to focus on the humans first. and that's true with the coaching
any of our clients on csr scripts and his sort of sales training opportunities
like it's not about do this process join this program buy this whatever widget,
(42:46):
it's really trying to like use technology to enhance the human connection at
its core which sounds really boring to say it that way so that's kind of how
we've we've been restructuring a lot of our stuff internally and as technology
shifts and it will come and go and like right now we're we're talking AI and
Google, blah, blah, blah.
But in a year, it could be very, very different of a landscape at this pace.
(43:08):
Humans are still gonna need to connect with humans. And so if we kind of focus
there, then whatever technology, whatever tool gets in the mix.
Cool. Now that's just a part of that transaction, but we're not going to be
reliant on any particular algorithm.
Oh, and look, it's Matt. Hey, guys.
This is perfect timing because I got to jump for another meeting.
(43:32):
So, Matt, you're taking my place.
How did that happen? All right. Bye, everyone. Have a good weekend.
I'm sorry, Matt. I'm sorry, Matt. It's you, not me. It's you, Matt.
You're not the new co-host today. Show things again. You're welcome.
What's up how are you guys what's up dude hey matt living the dream roofing
(43:53):
we're talking roofing everyone needs one we're talking about the new or we'll
talk talking about google,
oh yeah yeah how's it going in your world what are you seeing with your traffic,
traffic's well talking about some variables we just launched a new site last
week so So better, better than it was.
(44:15):
But we had our old site was not very technically sound.
So I imagine we were going to get natural lift anyways, regardless of it being a new build.
But actually, it's seeing some pretty good changes from the traffic side of
things, seeing much more organic traffic coming through now,
whereas they were very reliant on paid before.
(44:35):
Where is it stored at? What state is it coming from?
So the actual... Hold on. One second.
While he's looking that up, I'm going to maybe hop on to her highlight to what
Brian said about the human element of things.
So I've been less involved in SEO in my career and more pay-per-click.
(44:58):
And I managed a team at an agency.
And my first hires were an engineer who
didn't want to be an engineer anymore an actuary and someone
in economics like it's very much math people
yeah towards towards the end and it's because like i wanted them to analyze
and decode the game so they can play the google game better towards the end
(45:21):
i was looking for psychologists marketers people who understand consumer behavior
because google is making the
technical part more easy or maybe even less relevant.
But what's really important is understanding the pain of customers and therefore
how to communicate the value to them, which from an SEO perspective,
(45:43):
that sounds like it's more and more like understanding humans and speaking to
humans, which at some times black hat SEOs are going to figure out the game
and get over you. Yeah. But then, of course, they will crash and burn.
But if you just want a steady, consistent, long-term growth plan,
just focus on doing the right thing, I guess.
I think it's just been a big miss because a lot of people have,
(46:05):
not a lot of people think about the psychology, right, behind humans.
And we all react because of certain triggers, right?
And when we go through certain events, we act a certain way.
And it's actually pretty predictable.
And I think a lot of people miss out on, okay, if a customer is coming to our
house, why do we have a picture of a roof for the roofing industry?
(46:28):
Why do we have a picture of a roof? roof why don't we have a picture like
if you go to our website now it's a family playing in the yard because
what we want them to forget about is their roof because that's
what we do right and i think a lot of people just are really missing out on
that they're just so hyper focused on what they do like people even care now
at the end of the day people don't care if we do hvac we don't they don't care
(46:48):
if we do roofing they do care that we provide them peace of mind and now they
have to stop now Now they can stop worrying about it and get back to life. I totally agree.
I think Donald Miller's like story brand framework is really good for putting
that into like a map. It's helpful for a lot of people.
The guy, what is his name? Michael, Michael Lewis, the guy who wrote the book money ball.
(47:11):
He's done a lot of research on this too, about like how people make decisions
differently than you think that they should.
It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so much stuff. The biology is a good one.
Yeah it's it's totally agree with you man.
That was one that really got me thinking differently was that biology book.
It was just, you know, marketing is not about creating things that look fancy or make you feel good.
(47:37):
It's, it's really what, what, what triggers that, that, that sense of relief for a pain point.
What's funny, I think what started me going down on that road was there several
years ago, I met a guy who he, he was a marketer for tobacco.
Like, so he worked for a big cigarette company and his background was psychology
and behavioral economics or something like that.
(48:02):
But his whole job at that time was to use science to help people buy more cigarettes.
And I remember him talking about his just internal moral struggle he had of that sort of outcome.
It's not like you're helping them have a better life. It's not like you're helping
(48:24):
them save money for college.
Just not like like this is pre-nudge factories
that we have now in a lot of countries this is
just get people addicted to nicotine and uh so he he walked away from marketing
entirely he just he he had such a big internal conflict with what he was being
asked to do yeah it's crazy but that was that was the first sort of conversation
(48:47):
i went oh my gosh this is way way bigger than i
realized was happening right now right right so
what i missed earlier oh gosh i'm grumpy
45 minutes of all sorts
of brain thoughts yeah just brain thoughts on google and the new overview ai
overview and the content that you're seeing there and how it's not based on
(49:12):
proximity search it's based on general questions and making consumers more curious
and bringing them to more
of a curiosity standpoint and discovery standpoint versus giving them the answer
that's direct to their search.
Yep. Yep. Right.
(49:33):
Yeah. I think it's interesting.
I think we've always had this fake thing within the marketing universe, right?
That, oh, we need to be doing something special, right? We need to be doing
something different per se. And really, I think Google's always directed us down the path.
(49:53):
Granted, I have a lot of questions around Google in general and how they drive
money and then how they drive people to drive them money.
But at the end of the day, from the SEO side of things, I think they've always been fairly upfront.
It's like, do the simple things really well all the time.
And we just constantly lose focus on that because of all these shiny objects,
(50:18):
specifically in the spaces we work within.
I know I probably said that a thousand times, but it's real.
You create good content that people will want to read in a time of need.
Google will, as long as it's legitimate and authentic, Google will eventually
serve that content. Eventually.
(50:38):
In time. It may take a little while, but don't get me wrong.
Right now they're serving content. What was that one, Johnny,
about the spaghetti and gasoline?
Pull it up. The one I saw today was name some foods that end in the letter U-M.
Here's some foods ending in U-M.
(50:59):
Orange-um, banana-um, apple-um. Just appended U-M to the end of all of them. AI is so smart.
We're making up our own words now. yeah that's right
serum but for
like every single one of those they like then put it to chat gpt
and it does it right like every time okay the
(51:20):
question is can i use gasoline to cook spaghetti no you can't
use gasoline to cook spaghetti faster but you can use gasoline to
make a spicy spaghetti dish here's the recipe for spaghetti cooked with gasoline
all a pack of instructions and a separate pan saute garlic onion and gasoline
until fragrant add diced tomatoes you get the rest but yeah I still have AI opinions like it,
(51:46):
There is something that makes humans special.
And it's the ability to reason that AI just doesn't have, right?
It's binary. It's designed binary, right? It's zero and ones.
And I think that is the ultimate flaw.
Also, what's part of its ultimate strength, because it can process data binary very quickly, right?
(52:09):
But I think there's ultimately going to be a little bit of a flaw.
And will it learn and become better? Yes. but I think it's always going to have that inherent flaw.
I sound like a grumpy grandpa. Like, oh, yeah, it's not real.
It's not going to be a real thing.
It's true that I'm protecting my job. I think there's a little bit of overhype,
but just marketing in the roofing space, guys.
(52:30):
I think there's a lot of hype. I think I saw recently that experts are predicting
it will have human reasoning skills by 2050.
So in 25 years. Now that's, again, based off of... i'm out of people's thoughts and opinions.
This generation's humans or the next generation's humans
(52:51):
like what's the benchmark that's comparing it to you oh because
the reasoning is still there maybe going down yeah i
think we're idiot circuiting i don't know
how to make that i love that movie i watch it every
year it's so good yeah especially
baseline for reality yeah so
like google's talking about we're stoking curiosity and having
(53:13):
them like learn more but like people this
is going to turn people into they go to a place they get an answer they
don't have to think about it i see that happening with myself right i have to
be less creative and pulling resources together and exercise it's something
i mean it's like your mental math versus using a calculator but it's like a
calculator for your life which like not to get existential on like what is humanity
(53:36):
and and all of that but like,
I do personally worry about, like, I have two kids. They're four and seven.
Like, what is their life going to be? And how do we keep their brains active
and, I guess, like, have a fulfilling life that things aren't just handed to
them? Like, mentally, I guess.
(53:56):
But also, how will they be viewing it? Is my, like, how will they be absorbing it?
Because they all watch videos, right? Right. And they seem to we've we've seen
to rewire their brains in some sort of holding a book, being tactical,
kinesthetic, touching to where we're forcing everyone to watch and then making
(54:17):
that watch time longer, shorter, semi short.
Like, I'm interested in how we're rewiring our little one's brains at this moment
with what's going on, to be honest.
Yeah, I think that's a legit concern. I like talking to John.
He always brings up the deep questions. He really does.
I think a lot of validity to that, right? We let our kids, well,
(54:41):
now they get to watch a Friday night movie with us.
We all sit down as a family. We've got Beauty and the Beast this evening.
That sounds excitingly terrible, but at least it's with the kiddos.
But that's the only TV they get throughout the week.
And Millie, we'll catch her at 11 o'clock at night reading a book.
But it's going to come down to what decisions we make as parents to what tools they have available.
(55:05):
I don't know if it's necessarily wise for us to leave the world up to figuring
out how our kids need to be raised.
I think that can create some problems. God, I'm sounding old again.
But I'm totally with you. I've got both my kids.
My son's turning 14. My daughter's turning 12 in just a few weeks.
And I remember when they were younger like wrestling with similar things Matt like this.
(55:32):
I stare at screens all day long and I hate it, hate it. And I don't want that for them.
And it's like play with blocks, go climb trees, like read an actual book,
read a newspaper, right?
Like these sort of things that I think that there's value in it.
And a lot of research out of Scandinavia would, would be indicative of that too.
But at the same time, like holding intention, the fact that in a lot of Asian
(55:57):
countries, digital first curriculum is, has been around way before us.
Yeah so kids are learning how to communicate with technology interface
with technology leverage technology way better to do
math and music and pick a thing so it's
like on one hand i don't want to starve my kids the opportunity to
learn to have those opportunities so that they're behind as
(56:18):
an adult right developmentally speaking and at
the same time say no no no play with blocks go outside
and ride your bike like don't play a basketball video
game go actually shoot hoops like right your hands dirty but look
at the predicament that we as marketers see every
day on the operation side of our business having labor shortages right the laws
(56:40):
of supply and demand generally always work in a capitalistic environment right
and and that that's going to drive our wages up and up and up and what's that
going to do that's going to shift on the the value
pendulum is going to switch then at some point back
to manual labor if everyone if
everyone's going more towards this digital route there are
(57:02):
things like the roofing the trades things that nature that we still need people
to do for now until johnny makes our robots be cool working on it i hear you
keep like keep that sprint any value there well i i think the most important skill for
my kids to learn for their success,
(57:23):
maybe they're a little too young, but like teenagers, is prompt engineering.
Like knowing how to get the most out of ChatGPT or whatever it might be.
For example, talking about like the blocks versus real life,
something that my kid asks me all the time is, can you make me a coloring page?
And he likes to, you know, ChatGPT creates like a coloring page and then he colors it.
(57:44):
And he'll like, the one last
week was a samurai robot named Mushi Momo Momo that fights like
giant lizards okay like creative cool
let's do it and so we did
that like what's the next adventure for Mushi Momo we have like 10 different
like kind of battle royale scenes that he colored all of them which is great
and a very good exercise of like that that output like didn't look good how
(58:08):
should we change the prompt but then if that's all we're doing like there needs
to be a balance because he also needs to you know just take a blank piece of
paper and drive and be able to do that as well.
I think we need to watch that ourselves.
If everyone's using chat GPT.
Marketing there's some value in originality and like
(58:29):
chat gpt generative ai in general is
very good at reproducing something
that's been done before better than most humans but to
like come up with a brand new novel game-changing idea
not so good at that and that's we need
to still nurture that ability in
(58:49):
ourselves yeah so do you
do do you buy like the lego sets that already have like
the theme like they're already star wars they've got the instructions or do
you buy like here's a bucket of blank lego bricks
invent it's not
the exact debate you know me and my wife have it all the time and
we do both we're like here's here's a set like you
(59:10):
can make these sets also here's random lego
build something cool and we try and balance both yeah magna
tiles those are in my jam building i forgot about those do you have the ball
run ones no no i think we're finally out of the age but we had one that would
probably try to eat them so but i think we're in a safe spot now we could probably
(59:32):
invest safe spot nothing will go in the mouth.
We did get one of those sticky eyeballs with the eyes that move around in the
little plastic thing our daughter put one of those up her nose the other day
that was an exciting tweezer experience,
don't ask, we have no clue how it happened, she came down from going to bed
(59:54):
with an eye up her nose oh god and they're done that.
Well this has been a great conversation and i
think it's like a great viewpoint for a lot
of different perspectives of what's happening now with google just in general
and it's literally history in the making right and i think that's the really
(01:00:17):
cool part that we don't want to forget like this is what it is right now and
it's going to evolve it already is at the moment of the second of search, right?
And how cool is that, that we all get to be experiencing it as consumers,
but also as marketers in this age of this day and age,
(01:00:38):
because we've gone through so many different shifts when it comes to Google,
right? COVID was a big shift.
This is a big shift. We just keep pivoting and adapting and knowing that we
have the ability to do this and then partner together like this and collaborate
and just expand on our thoughts and our ideas.
(01:00:59):
And I really just appreciate you all jumping on the call with me and Eric today
and, you know, just discussing, having open discussions.
And maybe we should do this like with more marketers every month and just have
a round table discussion.
So that'd be fun. Does anyone else have any last thoughts before we end this hour long discussion?
(01:01:21):
No. I think my only thoughts is like, yeah, it's almost like,
give your marketers a break right now.
If you have this weird expectation that marketers always know the right answer,
know what's going on. There's a lot of change.
It's a lot of uncertainty. And it's not BS.
(01:01:42):
There's a lot. The people who are good humans, who are really thoughtful about
what they do, they're trying their damnedest.
So if you have a partner that you trust and you work with, with like awesome,
like give them a whole lot of grace as we're all trying to figure this crap out.
We all want it to be easier, all of us.
So, yeah, I just say it's just impossible to test anymore. Yeah,
(01:02:03):
we will test these these these variables.
We used to be able to test out within a month or two and be able to see how
these algorithms changed and what we needed to adapt to and what we needed to
make changes on site with.
But now with them coming out every 30 days, it seems it makes it almost almost
impossible to really identify the true trigger points. But we're working through a man.
(01:02:25):
Focus on humans and diversify. right
like now it's a better time than now like database
database yeah own
own your people's yeah that was the reason for my text i'm working in the middle
of a database project i was like what he texted me and he's like i love marketing
he didn't say that he had a bad word in it but and i was like awesome like tell
(01:02:51):
me more that was it that was the only text i got Okay.
Well, thank you guys so much. And if you like this, you know,
review it, leave us comments.
We'll answer any questions that you have on the Facebook thread and have a great day. Thanks.
There we go. What's up? We're live. What's going on, everyone?
Welcome back to another episode.
Exciting episode. Breaking news of the trademark.
We've got Johnny Wenzel joining us today. And Johnny, before we get started,
I got to know, can you please tell us of a time when you got secondhand embarrassment for someone?
(00:21):
When I was embarrassed for someone else? Yeah, like you were out in public and
you saw someone like walk into a door, something super embarrassing.
Oh man. I feel like I have a lot of examples and I'm thinking of my wife who's
a little bit, can be clumsy, but I don't think she'd want to share that example.
Yeah. Okay. So one time I was in Detroit biking and very much saw someone just
(00:50):
peeing on the side of a house, very uncomfortable experience.
And then they They looked at me and I looked at them and we locked eyes.
It was the most uncomfortable one second of my life. And then we very much looked
away like nothing was happening.
So that one, very embarrassing for both of us in that case.
Oh gosh, firsthand and secondhand embarrassment. It's rough. Yeah.
(01:11):
Yeah. All right. Well, we are excited. We're going to be digging into some stuff
about Google today. All the changes around Google, good, bad, ugly.
So let's go ahead and dig in. Step into the trademark.
(02:01):
What up, what up, what up, Sarah? How's it going? It's going pretty good.
How's it going, Johnny? Thank you for joining us last minute.
Yeah, no, I've been preparing for this for months and took notes and I'm ready to go.
Good. I mean, we've been talking about the Google changes for over a year now,
and I'm always astonished when we're in a room and we're talking about SGE and
(02:24):
all of the new new changes.
And people look at us like, this is the first time they've heard it.
I'm like, but I talked about it for a year.
Yeah, absolutely. You actually sent me on this, Sarah, to one of Tommy Mello's
podcasts to talk about GPT and all of that.
(02:45):
And the person I was with said, most people don't know what it is.
They are not familiar with chat GPT.
We were in an uber at the time and asked the uber driver like hey have you heard
of chat gpt person said no we went to red robin actually believe it or not ask
the waitress have you heard of chat gpt,
and they said like oh what what's that so like most people are actually despite
(03:08):
the hype i think you know as marketers in this space we obviously are all over
it and advocates like yourselves I don't think marketers are all over SGE and in AI.
It's like, you know, we should be.
And the ones that are innovative and ready for the next thing and paying attention
(03:32):
are, but not every marketer is on the same level as well.
So, you know, what you don't know, you don't know.
But it scares me what they don't know. Right?
Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. But it's been encouraging to see how the trades
have been embracing this.
A lot of people in the trades, and I feel like advocates of it like yourself
(03:54):
and others in the space are really pushing for the trades to use it to improve
their operations, their marketing, really anything they can.
And I've seen some very creative applications of that.
Just generative AI in general. But now it's, you know, to the point of Google's
making changes, it's changing so rapidly. So how do we, how do we stay on top of it?
(04:16):
Yeah. How do we stay on top of it, Johnny? Like what, what's your take on this?
Yeah. So the very, I mean, it's a simple answer, but following certain newsletters really helps.
I know that Sarah, you often send me links to newsletters. Look at this, this is happening.
So search engine land is a really good one specifically for SEO and PPC,
(04:39):
just understanding the changes and the leaks and whatever, whatever's happening.
I tend to like just pick one or two that you like find.
If you have too many, you'll get overwhelmed and it's usually less more in this case.
So I almost exclusively just look at whatever search engine land is saying.
I also subscribe to an AI newsletter as well that talks about the latest advancements
(05:04):
in usually different GPT applications.
Yeah. And so what have you been seeing? And Eric, what have you been seeing?
Because you get to look at people's sites on the back end.
So I guess first we should explain what Google Generative AI has done or what
they've done with SGE and in search in general. So, Johnny, you're really good
(05:27):
at explaining things because I sent you articles, so you read a lot.
Yeah. Johnny, let's delve into this. Delve. Yeah.
So, I guess going right to the very beginning of SGE stands for,
I think, I don't even know, is it Search Generative Experience? Is that it?
(05:50):
Maybe it's like generating or there's a few. More or less, the Search Generative Experience.
And it all has to do with chat GPT. Should I like give it a basic on what chat GPT even is?
Let's go like all the way, all the way back. Go all the way.
Let's go all the way basic. Yeah, absolutely.
(06:11):
So I was going to, you know, jokingly do a technical explanation of neural nodes
and the technology behind it.
That never goes well. What does go well is chat GPT. What it is,
is you more or less put in a prompt.
It's what it's called, a question, a task. You ask it to do something and it spits it out.
(06:33):
And kind of a good analogy for it is it's similar to autocomplete.
So think if you're typing an email or sending a text message.
Text message is a better example. You're typing it and then it will have usually
three different words that you can pick as the next word that it is predicting
you should be using next.
(06:53):
Or with an email that'll you know in the gray text
it'll say this is you know how you could finish this sentence and
so that's autocomplete it is looking at
your past behavior and using
that to try and predict what comes next chat gpt is that on like steroids supercomputer
(07:15):
instead of just looking at you know your history it's the history of every word
digitally documented like in the history of human existence.
So tons of data that has really kind of fed this digital brain that allows it
to predict really well what's supposed to come next.
And so it's not just how to finish this email, but a lot more advanced,
(07:40):
like what comes next when planning a complete marketing strategy.
And even more advanced now is video and image generation.
It's just taking a prompt and kind of predicting almost pixel by pixel what
should come next based off of how every picture in human history that's online
has done something similar.
(08:01):
So it's incredibly impressive how it works.
But as far as you need to understand it, you put in a request and with a pretty
high degree of accuracy,
it gives you an answer that's more or less acts like a brain that has analyzed
all the data of human history and is predicting the right thing to say back to you.
(08:26):
And what are they doing with it in search?
Yeah. So what they're doing with it in search specifically, search meaning like the Google page.
So you go onto Google and you search.
Historically, it's always, Google's been more like a catalog of websites.
So they have a list of all of the websites that relate to the keyword that was used in the search.
(08:49):
What Google has done, and they've done it in response to ChatGPT,
which is open AI, which is owned by Microsoft.
So Microsoft's kind of really been pushing this a reversal of how things have
gone the last decade or two, at least from the online search perspective is
they're pioneering this.
Whereas Google is now kind of playing catch up all along
(09:11):
the way and it's exactly
that it's it's providing the the
chat gpt response above the search results so really when you are now google
searching it is generating the predicted response rather than just showing you
all the websites that could answer this response maybe we should show an example.
(09:36):
Yeah. That's what I was pulling up.
All right. I just searched, uh, yeah, I just, I just searched,
uh, air conditioner, not cooling.
And so, yeah, I pulled what, you know, what I, what I assume is probably like
an, an aggregated list of stuff based on the average of, you know,
(09:59):
the same content, similar content they found across the web.
But it also, I think something that a lot of people are wondering,
Johnny, is how this all works.
So you get the AI overview, and I search air conditioner not cooling.
And it's like, the air conditioner is on, but not cooling. It could be a number
(10:19):
of reasons, including seven common reasons.
And then right underneath of it is an article to this site.
So I just wondered, obviously, this is the source, but why not mention that?
Yeah. So that is the difference between Google and how open AI or chat GPT historically
(10:39):
has gone is, especially the early versions of chat GPT,
it was always sort of based off of historical information. It wasn't searching in real time.
And so it was, if you ask it anything from like the last year,
current events, it wouldn't know it.
Google being, you know, the search engine of all search engines is launching
(11:01):
with more of a search focused, that is layered onto and integrated with their product.
So specifically, rather than just only looking at the history of everything
that's ever been written,
they're doing that, but also giving some preference to the things that were
ranking highly for them, that they thought had a high ability to answer that question.
(11:23):
And then they're referencing that and almost citing it there at the bottom.
So the Google experience is a lot more about live search layered in with it,
as opposed to how ChatGTT has gone.
Now the new model, the 4.0 model, seems like it actually has search capabilities
and it is doing a lot more live search with these things.
(11:46):
But that's what's going on, is it's looking at every word ever written and then
And also looking at the Google search results for that and coming up with the
best answer and citing its sources there at the bottom in that carousel.
But then if you scroll down, look at the mess that they created.
So if you're a consumer, you're like a normal human being and you're looking
at Google and you're like, oh, air conditioner not cooling.
(12:09):
And that could be a search, right? More than likely it would be like my AC is
not blowing cool air or AC not cold.
They give you all of these diagnosis as a consumer.
How confused would you? You'd have to like they want you to DIY almost.
(12:30):
But there's 15 more. Look, go back, Eric.
Up or down. I see. Yeah. Like, oh, my God.
Dirty air compressor. It's like screaming at you.
Like Google's intent in the beginning was to provide a relevant search within
a very fast time frame with authority that's great content that can really make
(12:57):
a conversion happen faster at the speed of search.
But they've slowed down. I wonder what the speed time is first.
But they've slowed down the conversion with content.
And so they're confusing the consumer.
Because if i was a consumer i'd be like well so
everything could be wrong but where
do i even you know obviously yeah pop your air filter but i mean seriously you've
(13:23):
just like made something relevant irrelevant because it's not relevant to like
i don't know and people believe Google so much.
They believe it as the source of truth, which is insane to me.
But that's because I'm a marketer. And I know that I input things into search.
(13:44):
But Google is just not the source of truth. Like.
And car easy. So that's irrelevant. And what will it could be based on the keyword?
Yeah. Yeah. They've created a huge mess.
And, you know, like we were talking about before the show, Sarah,
(14:04):
like all of these dropdowns, they're giving you four articles.
Articles and all of these articles i'm looking
at it i know for a fact that lead company is not here in virginia beach
cool ray is not in virginia beach florida space.gov
that's not in virginia beach carrier that's
carrier could be one of the relevant ones i'd say hoffman
(14:25):
brothers they're not here so i mean yeah
like these websites are going to provide us with the answers that helped
aggregate this this response or this you know this output on google search but
like like you were saying if I'm searching and that was always like the like
the beautiful thing about Google was like I would search where I'm at right
(14:46):
now like mosquitoes are you know in my backyard or.
Tree fell over instead of it being like here's six reasons why your tree might
have fallen over it would have been like here's six free care companies and
so like you're not you're not getting that much you know of course you search
near me or nearby you'll probably get it but Yeah,
but Google has proximity in there, right? Well, it should have proximity.
(15:09):
And in the search labs, when, you know, it was first, when they were testing
it, it did have, it was working on building the proximity into that search.
But I'm going to send Raya Redding a link too.
But now it just seems convoluted with ranking content that may have authority,
(15:29):
but it doesn't have, like, yes, I want my blog to be known everywhere.
But I don't, like, the clicks and the impressions matter, but the conversions
matter more for a small business, right?
If I'm showing up in Timbuk2 because someone's saying AC not cooling,
(15:52):
but I'm in California, how does this help my small business?
Let's check this out. All right, so Miller's, that's actually a client of mine.
They're in Chesapeake, Virginia. They do serve as my city, but their blog should
appear, which I'm not saying that's indicative of my location.
I think that's just because I know for a fact that we optimized this article for this query.
(16:17):
I'm not going to click on it, but let me just do this. One hour.
There's a page. I was wondering if Valvoline, love it.
There's pages coming up, but I was wondering if they had that AI overview,
if that would help their chances in local search or organic,
but they were fourth for AC repair near me, which is not amazing.
(16:41):
Yeah, so for questions, they're ranking, but for normal searches, their output is below.
Yeah. Johnny, what would you say about this?
So I appeared distracted. I was looking up some recent quotes from Google CEO about this. Yeah.
(17:04):
And here's a few things from a recent interview. you.
He says, part of what I hope search serves to do is give a lot more context
around that answer and allow people to explore it deeply.
And then jumping around here, got a bit of black in this comment,
but he says, I remain optimistic.
(17:25):
Empirically, what we are seeing throughout the years, I think human curiosity
is boundless. It's something we deeply understood in search.
More than any other company, we will differentiate ourselves in our approach
through this transition, and then this one.
People are responding very positively to AI overviews.
(17:46):
It's one of the most positive changes I've seen in search based on metrics.
But people do jump off on it. And when you give context around it,
they actually jump off it.
It actually helps them understand so they engage with the content underneath too.
In fact, if you put content and links within AI overviews, they get higher click-through
(18:07):
rates than if you put it outside of AI overviews.
So that is the claim from Sundar, CEO of Google, that it is making more clickable.
It's this idea that it's encouraging or feeding natural human curiosity to answer
or to fully understand the question.
(18:30):
The thing is, I think that is true in a lot of contexts.
It probably helps for something I could realistically do by myself.
I could not fix my own air conditioner. I'm a marketer. I'm not a tech.
I had laser eye surgery last week. I'm not going to want to know how to do that.
I honestly don't even want to know the nuances of how it works.
(18:52):
Just get it done and help me see, right?
Which I think there is some benefits here, but Google continues to be built for a general use case.
And over and over i
think we see the trades often gets left behind as having very particular niche
interests and use cases that google hasn't built specifically for what do you
(19:18):
think ryan welcome to the show hey thanks thanks for looping in this is awesome
what's up johnny what's up eric,
okay so i i'm probably more cynical i i saw this interview i i kind of think
they're full of crap right now i'm not gonna lie i feel like they they're trying
(19:39):
so damn hard to push out tech in front of people even though it's not fully baked yet.
They know that that's where they have to go. They know that's where the trend
is. There's a lot of pressure for them to move.
I don't think they're really as thoughtful as they're coming across.
And I think the CEO of Alphabet has to publicly say, oh this is what we're looking
(20:03):
for and all the he's a salesperson right he's trying to make,
stockholders happy i i haven't seen that sort of impact and i think i think
the scuttlebutt inside google from the people who i know who are on the various
teams who especially who are leveraging and implementing the ai components into
(20:23):
search and ads and various things is that they're all just,
scrambling to meet really weird targets like
there's no thoughtful master plan
there's they're not and i think there's just a lot of a lot of external pressure
to compete with open ai like open ai has obviously the partnership with bing
(20:44):
they've got now this ink partnership with apple like there's a big pressure
with google to get this crap together fast fast.
So yeah, I'm with you, Johnny. I think that Google's trying to look at it in
a general use case of like, hey, how do you make a cheeseburger or whatever? That's fine.
(21:04):
But if we're going to take any sort of inference we have from the knowledge
panel where people would do a zero-click result, there's a lot of critique about Google.
And those were announced because they were siphoning web traffic away from where
that information came from.
They're They're just feeding it to the user. It was helpful for the user on
those sort of things, but it starved people of the traffic that they were depending on.
(21:26):
I was just reading just two days ago, trying to think two days ago where a site
who predominantly provided like sports data, like high end high analytical sports
data and got a lot of traffic.
Since this AI overview came out, all their traffic has been slashed by 90 something percent.
Which if you are doing anything about publishing content,
(21:48):
content it is like strangling you so i'm
i'm very cynical right now and we
gotta be careful that my google doesn't hear me and but like
it's just i get why they're trying to do it and i actually like like the idea
of what it could be like that just feels like so far away right now like with
(22:11):
the dream and the reality just feels like very very not in alignment but that's just me,
I think like Johnny and I can speak from the product manager side, Puneet.
Of, of managing and creating technology products, right? Google is a product,
and it has multiple products inside of it.
And Johnny was just at Google last week.
(22:31):
And I read somewhere on a post, they were like, well, all of you holding events
at Google, you know, is that really where you want to be aligned with?
Yeah, it's Google, right? We want to be aligned with Google,
but we want to be there asking the right questions.
And we want to be there, like having the right conversation and being a part
of, hey, we're a small business, we're seeing this impact, like,
(22:55):
tell me more, because you're controlling our business, right? We have a voice too.
And I think that is where we go and we talk to Google and we ask questions.
But I think the point of the matter is, is that from a product manager standpoint,
we are given deadlines, we create the product, right?
(23:17):
We're given deadlines, we roadmap everything thing out we
but we have priority shift and when that
priority shift happens that means like other things
get deprioritized and that could just be in one component of part of the product
when there could be multiple others like departments and organizations that
aren't working with that one component when they should be and i think that's
(23:42):
what's happening in google as well because they've I've always worked like that,
even when I went to their office, you know?
Yeah, they've kind of done really good, like even as a model of like the sandbox
development sort of approach where multiple teams don't really have a set agenda.
It's almost like a skunk work sort of idea of like, hey, you guys just dream,
(24:04):
solve something, create something cool, and they'll figure out later how it all fits.
And I agree that Google is a product. My concern comes in with how much weight
that particular product has on the economy worldwide.
I think the latest stat I've read is somewhere between 25 and 33 cents of every
dollar is influenced by Google.
(24:27):
Either by the search or the transaction processing or the cloud processing.
They aren't just, oh, it's something you can opt in or opt out of,
you can choose to use or not.
They are pivotal, not just in the American economy, but the worldwide economy at scale.
And so them making snafus has really big practical impacts aside from the shareholders,
(24:53):
aside from PM delivery schedules, individuals aside from
that the impact to the economy
as a whole even if people don't know that
they're participating in it is profound and so
i think that's like one of my big gripes is that and
i'm not i'm not making the argument for like big brother to like regulate all
business exchange that's not exactly my critique but it is a it's a really big
(25:17):
risk when a company with that sort of scale and leverage makes rushed decisions
because the impact it makes trickles down with second and third hand outcomes,
that the stockholders don't care about, that the employee culture doesn't care
about, that the executive team doesn't care about. That's not their interest.
Right? So, yeah, it's a complicated puzzle.
(25:42):
Do you think that Google is the source of truth for consumers?
All of you answer it like that's deep,
have you ever lied to your search i was on a webinar and and i read that this
guy was like no one lies to their search yeah why is why does my tooth hurt when i drink water.
(26:08):
I don't lose weight fast a
friend of mine is overweight yeah a
friend of mine a guy i know eric eric has has
long hair like the overweight is the mullet really
a thing eric i'm curious to know i'm curious to know and honestly i'm just jealous
of johnny's hair i always am what eric i'm curious your take do you think google
(26:32):
is is the source of truth for people i think google is an avenue to help people
find the source of truth.
It's a platform. And I think that the beauty of free speech is that anyone can
go on there if they have a website, I guess, and say whatever they want.
(26:52):
And so I believe it's an avenue to help people arrive at an answer.
I wouldn't say that Google's the source of truth, but I would say it's definitely
an avenue that helps people arrive to the source of truth.
And I think, and this is what I was talking about in New Orleans,
is that web publishers and webmasters and business owners need to be putting
the truth on their website because the consumer is going to find out the truth
(27:14):
eventually it's either going to be from you or it's going to be from someone else.
And so if everyone just puts the truth out there, they're better off to be the
one to get that click and get that customer.
So if I can answer. Yes, please.
I think more than ever, social validation is guiding people's perception of truth.
(27:37):
I think reviews more than anything.
Because I think people are a lot more skeptical now than they ever have been.
Case in point, Brian. Existing.
We all are but
it's you know like the question that you know
(27:57):
a lot of listeners of this podcast like how do people pick
me you know what is the as you know they're
for home services roofing whatever it might be like
how are they going to choose my business and
so what is the truth there is that truth would be this is
the best home service business you can pick to solve
your problem and so like how they figure that out and
(28:19):
a lot of it you can go to a website and website say we're
the best and we do all this and there's some stuff with
you know like warranties you've been around you're trying to establish that credibility
but you know people they go to maps they
go to reviews and they try and
make an educated guess as to what's going to be the
right decision you know the the true plumber
(28:40):
near me that's gonna fix my pipes the best or whatever it might be yeah your
reputation starts in the search most definitely in the home service but i'm
saying like in general right like someone's googling like i have a frog in my
backyard and i I can't find it.
(29:00):
Right. And then like, gosh, I don't even know.
Is your frog. Okay. Sarah. My frog is great. His name is Sam. He's totally fine.
And Google helped me find it. No, but like random ask questions is what I'm thinking of. And, and,
Like, I feel like a lot of people will keep at the top of the search and not
(29:25):
dig deeper and say, well, does this article make sense to this article?
Does this depend on what search they're doing? Right.
If they're doing like medical discovery, then maybe they go in a couple links deeper.
But if they're asking like a random question, like how many links do you think
that they click to get to that source of truth for themselves?
(29:48):
So, I love questions like this because there's so many layers that have to get unpacked, right?
I would probably make the argument that as a society, and I think the past five,
10 years have demonstrated this in all sorts of avenues, our digital literacy is very, very low.
(30:11):
Like even though we have access to digital technology
and digital information our ability to
understand filter navigate interpret analyze those
things thoughtfully has never been worse so an
example like would be a library technically has
all the information nobody's lining up at the
library right to filter through research journals like
(30:34):
that's just not what they do and that's not a skill that we train really anymore
and because of to
your point johnny like social norming social pressure people are wanting to
find people like them who agree with them like you have all these like biases
and heuristics of like social norming fundamental attribution error confirmation
bias that people look for things that already agree with what they want and so you,
(30:59):
I don't think people will look deeply into things cynically,
even though the information is there.
In fact, it might be said that the way that social manipulation works is to
gravitate people who are high engagement with each other.
That's why, to some degree, social media is one of the most isolating places
on the planet because you find people like you and they disagree with you and
(31:22):
create these echo chambers.
It's not actually a true cross-section of social discourse. course.
It's not the public square that it used to be in the 1700s and 1800s.
So I think people do take, for better or for worse, what they get when they
do a Google search, that first impression.
I think they do take it as though it's true in face value, which is hilarious
(31:47):
because there's people like me and Eric, who's part of our income is actually
to help our clients find that real estate where it's easy to find, right?
To influence that outcome. And yet, it doesn't mean that it's true.
It doesn't mean that it's real. It doesn't mean that it is credible.
It doesn't mean any of those things are there. It's just, that's what people are fed.
So they assume it, which again, goes back to probably what I would say earlier
(32:08):
is like, there's a lot of weight and responsibility with companies like Google
to make sure that that information is as quality and as helpful and as vetted as it possibly can be.
It's a really complicated problem but i i think our
our digital literacy is so low that our brains do not want to engage to go is
this correct is this valid where's this data source from is this the right data
(32:30):
and we don't have the skills to actually do that process to actually thoughtfully
analyze it instead we just fall back into like what agrees with us or what makes
us feel a certain way it's like these weird.
Psychological responses not thoughtful analytical responses so i'm in a really negative mood right
now guys i'm sorry this is it happens
(32:53):
i mean it's like
a wild west out there right and search changes
by the second of search and it always has right like the keywords change everything
changes but this is a a new person like a new rollout and so now it's like it
can affect consumers and it's funny i was on the i was on the beta and so i
(33:16):
opted into everything But then as this rolled out,
I had to re-opt in to actually get the AI overview parts of the search again.
So I'm wondering how many people are experiencing it because I know everyone
has different searches or Google instances.
So, but from a marketing standpoint, I get the cynic. I get,
(33:38):
I get, I get, you know, it's, it's chaos.
And, you know, I was listening to this one, I don't know what he was,
maybe just talking, and he was like, yeah, black hat searches are up.
And I'm like, of course they are.
We don't know what we're doing.
(34:00):
Here's another deep question. See, we want to just keep rolling with it.
Do you all feel that the recent news of the leak was a controlled leak by Google?
Oh, yeah. It's a PR. A, people need to know. It's totally PR. You think so? Oh, yeah.
(34:20):
Okay, now you sound cynical and I sound like... Tell me why you think it's a
controlled PR leak. Now I'm curious about this.
Because I'm a marketer and I would do the same thing. No one's paying attention
to search. People don't know what they're doing. Black hat searches are going increasing.
Cyber insecurity issues are arising by this.
Yeah, I think that there was some control to that leak to distract people.
(34:48):
Will either distract them or PR because Google's just been in the hot seat for
the past couple weeks with all this AI overview stuff.
Personally, I haven't been paying attention to it, but I'm not getting on LinkedIn
arguing or getting on Reddit arguing.
But I do feel that there's become this bit of a witch hunt with SEOs versus Google.
(35:11):
And everyone's taking this leak and trying to
find something to prove that Google's been suppressing them for years or something,
but I could see it being a controlled leak. What do you think, John?
Honestly, I don't have a take. I'm not going to pretend to have a take.
(35:34):
Usually, if there's a clear benefit to something that a large organization is
doing and it yielded that result,
there's a chance of it. I think there's a chance of it being leaked.
But knowing the people I know at Google and the approach they take as a company,
I don't think they would have wanted this.
(35:55):
I also think they upset a lot of employees, to be honest.
Right you never you never know what an upset employee can do but at the same time like.
Google is google and they know what they're doing and their marketing team and
pr team you know when bad pr is happening so if that was true do you think they
(36:17):
would still make a pixel phone every year because it seems like at some point they would stop trying,
i think they just forgot about that department i mean i guess i guess maybe
i'm like anti-conspiracy from from the stuff that was in the leak,
(36:37):
if if i'm google and i'm like releasing something like oh no look at me there's
misdirection i think i don't i don't think i would have leaked those things
because some of those things directly,
contradicted things that google has publicly said for a while right there's
people looking at those things that were like hey google lied to us about x
y or z and google's having the backpedal and they're publicly saying things
(36:59):
like hey don't don't take this out of context and it does you don't know how
much we're waiting it and you don't know when in time this was a factor for us like.
It's not putting them in the best light as far as what was leaked and what they've
said publicly through like the webmaster forums with John Mueller and whatnot.
So it doesn't pass a sniff test to me of misdirection because it changes the conversation.
(37:25):
It, it more seems like it might be dirty laundry that shows that they probably
don't have their stuff together as they want people to assume that they do.
Not that they're incompetent, but just that it's, it's a
big complicated organism yeah i
think that's that's true where i have noticed with
any company you know that they probably
(37:48):
don't even any person they probably don't have their stuff together as much
as they're trying to lead you to believe yeah yeah just for for context on the
leak or those listings and like what leak happened there's i mean i can i can
give my take on it you guys probably have researched it better than me but essentially
google has their proprietary
algorithm on how they decide what content goes at the top, what goes at the
(38:11):
bottom of their search results.
And all of the different signals that they use, more or less just like a list
of all of them, were leaked.
And so the SEO community is kind of freaking out. Here's everything that they consider.
It would be more like if there's something you bought from the store,
there's an ingredient list on it, you wouldn't be able to recreate it necessarily.
(38:34):
Like you can see what's in it but you don't know how much of which and the process in which it is,
made so it's not like no one can take that necessarily and
build google but it does show everything
that's in there which includes some things they said that they don't
take into account so that's where
it's like a bit of that's the witch hunt that eric's
(38:54):
talking about people saying you said you don't look at this but it's here
in in the the documentation from from you
know i think march was the version so yeah really
exciting for i don't know exciting might
not be the right word like monumental like it's
it's a that's very significant event an exposure of things that you know the
(39:17):
black box of google kind of a kick into it but yeah was it on purpose was it
an accident or unintentional doesn't really matter i'm just glad it happened
yeah we report fork that you signed.
It's like, was it the new Coke whole thing again, right? Like,
they just like new recipe. Whoops, just kidding. Like.
(39:42):
Yeah it doesn't pass that snip test to me i'm probably with you johnny i just
don't know you know like i mean like it's speculation and whatever happened
happened it's out there for the world to interpret or put into chat gpt and
ask how to interpret this and what you should do,
which is what i did this morning and then i sent it to johnny after i downloaded
(40:04):
it And I was like, why is half of this like not there?
And then I thought about it. And of course, not everything would be there.
But the majority of the context was there.
Basically, I, I send a bunch of articles to Johnny all the time.
And I'm asking him questions like, what does this mean?
Please help me. Yeah. And then I'll I asked Chachi PT and pretend like I'm really smart.
(40:28):
Yeah so i think despite the doom and gloom of it and i really the doom and gloom
is just that it seems like google search which has been a reliable way to get to the truth maybe,
compromising that reliability that being said it's like it's the beast nature
(40:50):
of the beast It's the world that we're living in.
It will hinder a bit of ability to directly maybe help drive marketing results,
but there's still stuff we can do. We can navigate this world.
So Ryan, what are you doing to navigate this world? Very curious to just from your running an agency,
(41:13):
all your experience, how have you approached? I can see in pivots that you've done.
So this is going to sound really unsexy and really uncomplicated.
Philosophically, I would argue that a lot of the shifts, this is true for OpenAI,
this is true for Google, have been focusing around the core needs of humans
(41:36):
first, not about the specific tactics or technology in the middle.
In fact, I might argue that they're trying to make the technology make the human
interaction more transparent so if anything we've kind of reverted back to being
really focused on the human experience and the human engagement and not just
like oh here's the thing washrooms repeat it'll always work it's not what used to work in 2007 2008 2009,
(42:02):
but a lot of people skip over the human elements of marketing which is really
weird because that's It's a fundamental human experience. It's a human interaction.
And so a lot of us, like when we write content for a website,
it's focusing on the humans, not so much on the robots.
(42:22):
It's focusing the offers that are compelling to an actual target customer,
not just like, hey, this is going to get us higher conversion rates because X, Y, or Z.
We're really trying to focus on the humans first. and that's true with the coaching
any of our clients on csr scripts and his sort of sales training opportunities
like it's not about do this process join this program buy this whatever widget,
(42:46):
it's really trying to like use technology to enhance the human connection at
its core which sounds really boring to say it that way so that's kind of how
we've we've been restructuring a lot of our stuff internally and as technology
shifts and it will come and go and like right now we're we're talking AI and
Google, blah, blah, blah.
But in a year, it could be very, very different of a landscape at this pace.
(43:08):
Humans are still gonna need to connect with humans. And so if we kind of focus
there, then whatever technology, whatever tool gets in the mix.
Cool. Now that's just a part of that transaction, but we're not going to be
reliant on any particular algorithm.
Oh, and look, it's Matt. Hey, guys.
This is perfect timing because I got to jump for another meeting.
(43:32):
So, Matt, you're taking my place.
How did that happen? All right. Bye, everyone. Have a good weekend.
I'm sorry, Matt. I'm sorry, Matt. It's you, not me. It's you, Matt.
You're not the new co-host today. Show things again. You're welcome.
What's up how are you guys what's up dude hey matt living the dream roofing
(43:53):
we're talking roofing everyone needs one we're talking about the new or we'll
talk talking about google,
oh yeah yeah how's it going in your world what are you seeing with your traffic,
traffic's well talking about some variables we just launched a new site last
week so So better, better than it was.
(44:15):
But we had our old site was not very technically sound.
So I imagine we were going to get natural lift anyways, regardless of it being a new build.
But actually, it's seeing some pretty good changes from the traffic side of
things, seeing much more organic traffic coming through now,
whereas they were very reliant on paid before.
(44:35):
Where is it stored at? What state is it coming from?
So the actual... Hold on. One second.
While he's looking that up, I'm going to maybe hop on to her highlight to what
Brian said about the human element of things.
So I've been less involved in SEO in my career and more pay-per-click.
(44:58):
And I managed a team at an agency.
And my first hires were an engineer who
didn't want to be an engineer anymore an actuary and someone
in economics like it's very much math people
yeah towards towards the end and it's because like i wanted them to analyze
and decode the game so they can play the google game better towards the end
(45:21):
i was looking for psychologists marketers people who understand consumer behavior
because google is making the
technical part more easy or maybe even less relevant.
But what's really important is understanding the pain of customers and therefore
how to communicate the value to them, which from an SEO perspective,
(45:43):
that sounds like it's more and more like understanding humans and speaking to
humans, which at some times black hat SEOs are going to figure out the game
and get over you. Yeah. But then, of course, they will crash and burn.
But if you just want a steady, consistent, long-term growth plan,
just focus on doing the right thing, I guess.
I think it's just been a big miss because a lot of people have,
(46:05):
not a lot of people think about the psychology, right, behind humans.
And we all react because of certain triggers, right?
And when we go through certain events, we act a certain way.
And it's actually pretty predictable.
And I think a lot of people miss out on, okay, if a customer is coming to our
house, why do we have a picture of a roof for the roofing industry?
(46:28):
Why do we have a picture of a roof? roof why don't we have a picture like
if you go to our website now it's a family playing in the yard because
what we want them to forget about is their roof because that's
what we do right and i think a lot of people just are really missing out on
that they're just so hyper focused on what they do like people even care now
at the end of the day people don't care if we do hvac we don't they don't care
(46:48):
if we do roofing they do care that we provide them peace of mind and now they
have to stop now Now they can stop worrying about it and get back to life. I totally agree.
I think Donald Miller's like story brand framework is really good for putting
that into like a map. It's helpful for a lot of people.
The guy, what is his name? Michael, Michael Lewis, the guy who wrote the book money ball.
(47:11):
He's done a lot of research on this too, about like how people make decisions
differently than you think that they should.
It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's so much stuff. The biology is a good one.
Yeah it's it's totally agree with you man.
That was one that really got me thinking differently was that biology book.
It was just, you know, marketing is not about creating things that look fancy or make you feel good.
(47:37):
It's, it's really what, what, what triggers that, that, that sense of relief for a pain point.
What's funny, I think what started me going down on that road was there several
years ago, I met a guy who he, he was a marketer for tobacco.
Like, so he worked for a big cigarette company and his background was psychology
and behavioral economics or something like that.
(48:02):
But his whole job at that time was to use science to help people buy more cigarettes.
And I remember him talking about his just internal moral struggle he had of that sort of outcome.
It's not like you're helping them have a better life. It's not like you're helping
(48:24):
them save money for college.
Just not like like this is pre-nudge factories
that we have now in a lot of countries this is
just get people addicted to nicotine and uh so he he walked away from marketing
entirely he just he he had such a big internal conflict with what he was being
asked to do yeah it's crazy but that was that was the first sort of conversation
(48:47):
i went oh my gosh this is way way bigger than i
realized was happening right now right right so
what i missed earlier oh gosh i'm grumpy
45 minutes of all sorts
of brain thoughts yeah just brain thoughts on google and the new overview ai
overview and the content that you're seeing there and how it's not based on
(49:12):
proximity search it's based on general questions and making consumers more curious
and bringing them to more
of a curiosity standpoint and discovery standpoint versus giving them the answer
that's direct to their search.
Yep. Yep. Right.
(49:33):
Yeah. I think it's interesting.
I think we've always had this fake thing within the marketing universe, right?
That, oh, we need to be doing something special, right? We need to be doing
something different per se. And really, I think Google's always directed us down the path.
(49:53):
Granted, I have a lot of questions around Google in general and how they drive
money and then how they drive people to drive them money.
But at the end of the day, from the SEO side of things, I think they've always been fairly upfront.
It's like, do the simple things really well all the time.
And we just constantly lose focus on that because of all these shiny objects,
(50:18):
specifically in the spaces we work within.
I know I probably said that a thousand times, but it's real.
You create good content that people will want to read in a time of need.
Google will, as long as it's legitimate and authentic, Google will eventually
serve that content. Eventually.
(50:38):
In time. It may take a little while, but don't get me wrong.
Right now they're serving content. What was that one, Johnny,
about the spaghetti and gasoline?
Pull it up. The one I saw today was name some foods that end in the letter U-M.
Here's some foods ending in U-M.
(50:59):
Orange-um, banana-um, apple-um. Just appended U-M to the end of all of them. AI is so smart.
We're making up our own words now. yeah that's right
serum but for
like every single one of those they like then put it to chat gpt
and it does it right like every time okay the
(51:20):
question is can i use gasoline to cook spaghetti no you can't
use gasoline to cook spaghetti faster but you can use gasoline to
make a spicy spaghetti dish here's the recipe for spaghetti cooked with gasoline
all a pack of instructions and a separate pan saute garlic onion and gasoline
until fragrant add diced tomatoes you get the rest but yeah I still have AI opinions like it,
(51:46):
There is something that makes humans special.
And it's the ability to reason that AI just doesn't have, right?
It's binary. It's designed binary, right? It's zero and ones.
And I think that is the ultimate flaw.
Also, what's part of its ultimate strength, because it can process data binary very quickly, right?
(52:09):
But I think there's ultimately going to be a little bit of a flaw.
And will it learn and become better? Yes. but I think it's always going to have that inherent flaw.
I sound like a grumpy grandpa. Like, oh, yeah, it's not real.
It's not going to be a real thing.
It's true that I'm protecting my job. I think there's a little bit of overhype,
but just marketing in the roofing space, guys.
(52:30):
I think there's a lot of hype. I think I saw recently that experts are predicting
it will have human reasoning skills by 2050.
So in 25 years. Now that's, again, based off of... i'm out of people's thoughts and opinions.
This generation's humans or the next generation's humans
(52:51):
like what's the benchmark that's comparing it to you oh because
the reasoning is still there maybe going down yeah i
think we're idiot circuiting i don't know
how to make that i love that movie i watch it every
year it's so good yeah especially
baseline for reality yeah so
like google's talking about we're stoking curiosity and having
(53:13):
them like learn more but like people this
is going to turn people into they go to a place they get an answer they
don't have to think about it i see that happening with myself right i have to
be less creative and pulling resources together and exercise it's something
i mean it's like your mental math versus using a calculator but it's like a
calculator for your life which like not to get existential on like what is humanity
(53:36):
and and all of that but like,
I do personally worry about, like, I have two kids. They're four and seven.
Like, what is their life going to be? And how do we keep their brains active
and, I guess, like, have a fulfilling life that things aren't just handed to
them? Like, mentally, I guess.
(53:56):
But also, how will they be viewing it? Is my, like, how will they be absorbing it?
Because they all watch videos, right? Right. And they seem to we've we've seen
to rewire their brains in some sort of holding a book, being tactical,
kinesthetic, touching to where we're forcing everyone to watch and then making
(54:17):
that watch time longer, shorter, semi short.
Like, I'm interested in how we're rewiring our little one's brains at this moment
with what's going on, to be honest.
Yeah, I think that's a legit concern. I like talking to John.
He always brings up the deep questions. He really does.
I think a lot of validity to that, right? We let our kids, well,
(54:41):
now they get to watch a Friday night movie with us.
We all sit down as a family. We've got Beauty and the Beast this evening.
That sounds excitingly terrible, but at least it's with the kiddos.
But that's the only TV they get throughout the week.
And Millie, we'll catch her at 11 o'clock at night reading a book.
But it's going to come down to what decisions we make as parents to what tools they have available.
(55:05):
I don't know if it's necessarily wise for us to leave the world up to figuring
out how our kids need to be raised.
I think that can create some problems. God, I'm sounding old again.
But I'm totally with you. I've got both my kids.
My son's turning 14. My daughter's turning 12 in just a few weeks.
And I remember when they were younger like wrestling with similar things Matt like this.
(55:32):
I stare at screens all day long and I hate it, hate it. And I don't want that for them.
And it's like play with blocks, go climb trees, like read an actual book,
read a newspaper, right?
Like these sort of things that I think that there's value in it.
And a lot of research out of Scandinavia would, would be indicative of that too.
But at the same time, like holding intention, the fact that in a lot of Asian
(55:57):
countries, digital first curriculum is, has been around way before us.
Yeah so kids are learning how to communicate with technology interface
with technology leverage technology way better to do
math and music and pick a thing so it's
like on one hand i don't want to starve my kids the opportunity to
learn to have those opportunities so that they're behind as
(56:18):
an adult right developmentally speaking and at
the same time say no no no play with blocks go outside
and ride your bike like don't play a basketball video
game go actually shoot hoops like right your hands dirty but look
at the predicament that we as marketers see every
day on the operation side of our business having labor shortages right the laws
(56:40):
of supply and demand generally always work in a capitalistic environment right
and and that that's going to drive our wages up and up and up and what's that
going to do that's going to shift on the the value
pendulum is going to switch then at some point back
to manual labor if everyone if
everyone's going more towards this digital route there are
(57:02):
things like the roofing the trades things that nature that we still need people
to do for now until johnny makes our robots be cool working on it i hear you
keep like keep that sprint any value there well i i think the most important skill for
my kids to learn for their success,
(57:23):
maybe they're a little too young, but like teenagers, is prompt engineering.
Like knowing how to get the most out of ChatGPT or whatever it might be.
For example, talking about like the blocks versus real life,
something that my kid asks me all the time is, can you make me a coloring page?
And he likes to, you know, ChatGPT creates like a coloring page and then he colors it.
(57:44):
And he'll like, the one last
week was a samurai robot named Mushi Momo Momo that fights like
giant lizards okay like creative cool
let's do it and so we did
that like what's the next adventure for Mushi Momo we have like 10 different
like kind of battle royale scenes that he colored all of them which is great
and a very good exercise of like that that output like didn't look good how
(58:08):
should we change the prompt but then if that's all we're doing like there needs
to be a balance because he also needs to you know just take a blank piece of
paper and drive and be able to do that as well.
I think we need to watch that ourselves.
If everyone's using chat GPT.
Marketing there's some value in originality and like
(58:29):
chat gpt generative ai in general is
very good at reproducing something
that's been done before better than most humans but to
like come up with a brand new novel game-changing idea
not so good at that and that's we need
to still nurture that ability in
(58:49):
ourselves yeah so do you
do do you buy like the lego sets that already have like
the theme like they're already star wars they've got the instructions or do
you buy like here's a bucket of blank lego bricks
invent it's not
the exact debate you know me and my wife have it all the time and
we do both we're like here's here's a set like you
(59:10):
can make these sets also here's random lego
build something cool and we try and balance both yeah magna
tiles those are in my jam building i forgot about those do you have the ball
run ones no no i think we're finally out of the age but we had one that would
probably try to eat them so but i think we're in a safe spot now we could probably
(59:32):
invest safe spot nothing will go in the mouth.
We did get one of those sticky eyeballs with the eyes that move around in the
little plastic thing our daughter put one of those up her nose the other day
that was an exciting tweezer experience,
don't ask, we have no clue how it happened, she came down from going to bed
(59:54):
with an eye up her nose oh god and they're done that.
Well this has been a great conversation and i
think it's like a great viewpoint for a lot
of different perspectives of what's happening now with google just in general
and it's literally history in the making right and i think that's the really
(01:00:17):
cool part that we don't want to forget like this is what it is right now and
it's going to evolve it already is at the moment of the second of search, right?
And how cool is that, that we all get to be experiencing it as consumers,
but also as marketers in this age of this day and age,
(01:00:38):
because we've gone through so many different shifts when it comes to Google,
right? COVID was a big shift.
This is a big shift. We just keep pivoting and adapting and knowing that we
have the ability to do this and then partner together like this and collaborate
and just expand on our thoughts and our ideas.
(01:00:59):
And I really just appreciate you all jumping on the call with me and Eric today
and, you know, just discussing, having open discussions.
And maybe we should do this like with more marketers every month and just have
a round table discussion.
So that'd be fun. Does anyone else have any last thoughts before we end this hour long discussion?
(01:01:21):
No. I think my only thoughts is like, yeah, it's almost like,
give your marketers a break right now.
If you have this weird expectation that marketers always know the right answer,
know what's going on. There's a lot of change.
It's a lot of uncertainty. And it's not BS.
(01:01:42):
There's a lot. The people who are good humans, who are really thoughtful about
what they do, they're trying their damnedest.
So if you have a partner that you trust and you work with, with like awesome,
like give them a whole lot of grace as we're all trying to figure this crap out.
We all want it to be easier, all of us.
So, yeah, I just say it's just impossible to test anymore. Yeah,
(01:02:03):
we will test these these these variables.
We used to be able to test out within a month or two and be able to see how
these algorithms changed and what we needed to adapt to and what we needed to
make changes on site with.
But now with them coming out every 30 days, it seems it makes it almost almost
impossible to really identify the true trigger points. But we're working through a man.
(01:02:25):
Focus on humans and diversify. right
like now it's a better time than now like database
database yeah own
own your people's yeah that was the reason for my text i'm working in the middle
of a database project i was like what he texted me and he's like i love marketing
he didn't say that he had a bad word in it but and i was like awesome like tell
(01:02:51):
me more that was it that was the only text i got Okay.
Well, thank you guys so much. And if you like this, you know,
review it, leave us comments.
We'll answer any questions that you have on the Facebook thread and have a great day. Thanks.
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